Alive and Kickin' part 411:53 Sep 05 2011
Times Read: 638
The next day or two were ok. I still had back pain and finding a comfortable position to sleep in was a bother and I was still having trouble breathing, but I no longer had a stupid kidney stone, I was in my own bed and away from that awful hospital. Things were looking up...but not really.
Things just got worse as the days ticked on. My breathing was getting worse and worse even with my inhalers, my back was causing me so much trouble I couldnt even lay down on the bed without pain, my head had started to hurt, and I couldn't get any food down. I would manage to take down some soup and crackers only to throw them back up 10 mins later. By day 4 all I could eat were popsicles, my breathing was so labored I could barely move, and my head pounded so hard it felt like a woodpecker was burrowing through.
I was completely unaware of the danger I was in until one of my friends stopped by. He looked at me and said "Boy... your lips are... blue. I mean REALLY blue... I don't think they should be that blue..." I waved him off saying I was fine and it was nothing. *Points to self* completely clueless. My mom, thankfully, was not. She called for an emergency appointment with the general practitioner I had seen a couple weeks earlier.
When we got there, it literally took me half an hour to make my way from the car into the office. Moving was exhausting. Clearly something was wrong with me. Once in the office I went through the usual routine checking my vitals, but things didn't go as usual. The nurse took my breathing rate and gave me a very funny look. She called the Dr. in and they both looked at the monitor and shot me looks. The Dr. said "this machine has been acting werid we're going to take you to another room." We switched rooms and repeated the routine to pretty much the same looks. Yet this time the funny looks were looks of shock and alarm.
Before I knew it, the Dr. was on the phone calling for an ambulance, my mom was freaking out, and I was seeing unicorns in the corner. Literally.
The Dr. hung up the phone and turned to me and said "A normal person's breathing rate is 100. You are at 50. You are only getting half the amount of oxygen to your brain as you should. You are quite literally in danger of dying right now. The ambulance is on the way, you have to be admitted to the ICU"
Now me being the stubborn "nothing can keep me down" girl that I am, promptly told her mom could drive me. The hospital is only half a mile away. It was no big deal. Yeahh definately was in trouble. She kind of laughed and said no, she could lose her medical liscence if she let me walk out of there in the state I was in. I don''t know if that was a lie to get me to stay but it worked. I liked her and didn't want her to lose her liscence.
The paramedics came and strapped me in. I was in a rather good mood considering I was being tied down to a table and being sent back to that hell hole. I think it was the fact that I was literally seeing unicorns... hallucinations, that's what happens when your brain doesn't have oxygen.
I was rushed through the ER and guess who was the Dr. on call. Dr. Asshole we meet again... but this time I brought back up. My mom is naturally quiet. She doesn't yell or get to loud but you mess with one of her kids. She will eat you.
Dr. Asshole (yes I am pretty sure that is his name... or at least it should be) started right in about me being uncooperative but my mom cut him off and screamed about his lack of care. I don't really know what happened at this point I was SOoooo out of it. The next thing I remember is this horrid mask being strapped to my face, covering both my mouth and nose. I was told not to speak and to let the machine do the breathing for me or I would collapse a lung. Just FYI that doesn't exactly calm an already nervous patient down... seriously.
I must have passed out because the next thing I remember I woke up in the ICU later that afternoon. Mom explained what had happened. The mask on my face was called a BIPAP machine and it was used to dry out the lungs. When I was admitted to the hospital for the kidney stone I was given lasik salene solution as an IV. You are only supposed to get 1 bag in the ER and then be switched to a normal salene solution when you are admitted to the hospital. Someone missed that memo. Lasik flushes your system but does NOT absorb into your body to be discarded as urine while normal salene does. I spent 3 days hooked up to a lasik solution and went through 5 bags.
Since that fluid is not absorbed it had no where to go, so it collected in my lungs, the only open space it could find. They estimated I had 6 liters of fluids in my lungs. 6 liters. Yeah I'll say my breathing rate was 50. I spent the next 5 days in the ICU mostly in and out of consciousness and was only allowed off the BIPAP machine for an hour a day.
It was torture. I am naturally an insomniac and terrified of hospitals. So here I am stuck in a hospital with a horrid machine on my face, alone. I could stand to be alone but when you're in the hospital you are never left alone. Nurses were always coming in to check things, poke at me, and the worst stab me with needles.
The worst was "Nurse 3am" She was in charge of checking my blood oxygen levels. And if you don't know, they check that by STABBING you in the wrist and how ever fast your blood splurts out into the vial tells them how much oxygen is in your blood. Trust me on this, getting stabbed in the wrist, because they have to push SO FREAKING HARD to get to that artery, is awful. Man I thought the kidney stone was the worst of my problems... pft think again.
Along with my regular 3am stabbings (on both wrists) they also drew blood 3 times a day. By the 3rd day they blew the vein in my left elbow crook (the right was currently hosting my IV) so the restorted to mid forearm for blood draws. OMG its one of the worst pains ever and leaves a baseball sized bruise FYI. I was not winning at all this week.
My dad drove down to switch places with my mom and he managed to convince the pulmonologist who was in charge of my case, to order an MRI for my back. Let me tell you THAT was a painful experience. I've you've never had an MRI its kinda like being in a very noisy coffin. That part didn't bother me so much, the issue was I had to lie flat on my back and keep very still. Now when its your back that's causing the issue and you haven't been able to stand straight up or lay flat for weeks... being put in a noisy coffin and told to do that and lie very still is no easy feat. I cried the whole time.
Once back in my room and back on the BIPAP my Dr. came in with my scans. She stuck it on the light and proceeded to show me that one of my lower lumbar was bulged out and sitting on my sciatic nerve. Aha! and now we know where my sciatica came from. She sent in a specialist who told me I had 2 options. Option a) surgery to fix the lumbar or b) 6 to 9 months bedrest/low impact activity to let it heal on its own. I went with option b for the time being.
By the 6th day I was going out of my mind. I was off the BIPAP and on "normal tube oxygen" my breathing rate holding steady at 98% I had not showered for a week and I felt GROSS. All I wanted was a damn shower. To be CLEAN. But my Dr. had left for the night and forgot to change my orders so I was allowed to shower. I was trapped in a hospital, constantly stabbed, and now I have to be dirty?! So what else was there to do... but have a mental breakdown. I sobbed obnoxiously for an hour, gave myself the hiccups, a headache and eventually a nosebleed (yes when I get super upset it sometimes happens). It wasn't until the nosebleed that I was finally allowed a shower. Shoulda started with the nosebleed... they don't let you lay about in your blood.
Finally day 7 rolled around and I was allowed to go home. I was put on bedrest for a further 2 weeks and I hung about the apartment with my roomie watching movies getting well. If I was excited to go home before... there were no words this time. I had new proper medicine for my back, no kidney stone, dry lungs, no hallucinations (though I miss those) and no more stabbings! The nightmare was finally, truely, really OVER :)
~* Today *~
I still have kidney stones on random occasions, we haven't figured out what is causing them yet. None of them have been like that first one. Size of a peppercorn and covered with barbs like a burr you bring in from the forest. They still suck
I still have a bulged disk in my back that sits on my sciatic nerve. It's not so painful anymore. Sometimes it gives me trouble but my daily perscribed regimetn of Motrin helps. I do still have numbness in my leg (I have to be careful when shaving... I don't even feel the razor). I can no longer walk in heels as my balance is affected by the pinched nerve, but all and all I'll take it.
So here I am, celebrating the fact that I am still alive and kickin', no thanks to that clusterfuck of a hospital. Labor day is quite the day of rememberance for me (as you can see if you've read this far) And hey, a hospital tried to kill me (literally) and they failed.
Hopsital 0, Ari The Invincible! (j/k) 1
COMMENTS
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LordRazr
06:42 Sep 15 2011
congrats I know how it feels not to have a job for so long then finally getting one
deringerdan
11:17 Sep 15 2011
yaaaaaaahhhhh!!!! for Sleepy.. ;) tight hugs and says congratulations...
FeverDreams
11:57 Sep 15 2011
*does tippy toe dance and girly screams*